


Indecipherable

by flipflop_diva



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Post-Iron Man 2, Pre-Avengers (2012), Pre-Relationship, Rescue Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-22 23:31:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11390688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: She was a puzzle he couldn't quite figure out. And every time he saw her, she left another piece behind.





	Indecipherable

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sandyk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandyk/gifts).



> Written for the Not Prime Time 2017 fest for sandyk. Set between Iron Man 2 and The Avengers. I hope you enjoy!

The last time he saw her she was talking to Pepper outside Stark Industries, the morning after they took down Hammer. He waited until Pepper hugged her and departed — not exactly the farewell he had expected. He thought icy words would have been more appropriate — to approach her.

“I still don’t like you,” he told her bluntly.

She made a sort of dismissive noise under her breath, then turned to leave. He grabbed her arm. Not hard, just enough to stop her, but she glared at him anyway. He didn’t let go.

“But I do have respect for what you can do,” he admitted. “And I wanted to say thank you.”

She hadn’t seen that coming. He could tell. She didn’t give anything away, but just the fact that she stared at him for a few seconds without reacting told him he had caught her off guard. Good.

Finally, she took her arm back and nodded curtly.

“It was my job,” she said. “I just did it.”

And she walked away, red hair swinging behind her.

•••

He spent more nights than he would ever admit trying to find information on her. On the real her. SHIELD kept a close lid on everything, but they couldn’t hide all the reports.

Black Widow. Natalia Romanova. Natasha Romonoff. Defected to SHIELD six years ago. 

He found a photo from right before she came to SHIELD. She looked like she was barely more than a child back then. He kept digging, found the only hints he could about what the Red Room really was. A training center to turn little girls into assassins.

He searched for more, fearing what he might find. Barest hints of information here and there. Rumors mostly. Who she killed. Who she might have killed.

Cold-hearted. Ruthless. That’s what the tidbits added up to. A girl who killed for no reason other than to kill.

Except …

He couldn’t stop picturing her face, the way she looked at him when he told her thank you. He thought about Agent Coulson, about Fury. He didn’t know them, not really, but he suspected they wouldn’t have just hired an assassin, wouldn’t have just sent her into Stark Industries if they didn’t trust her.

She had to be more than the rumors about her claimed.

•••

He got Coulson — begged Coulson, really, but he would never admit that to anyone, not even under torture or fear of death — to get in touch with her for him.

It had been six months since he had last seen her, but he needed help. It was too much to handle on his own. His company was being attacked from the inside, Pepper had been kidnapped. He couldn’t trust anyone he worked with, not knowing who was behind it.

“Why me?” she asked warily when they met, face to face, on a bench in Central Park. She was dressed much like she had been when he knew her as Natalie — an A-line skirt, a white shirt, her long red hair down and tumbling over her shoulder.

“Because Pepper likes you,” he answered. “And I think you like her, even if you don’t like me. So I trust you to help me get her back.” He paused before adding, “Your skills will come in handy.”

She pressed her lips together. “You owe me if I help you.”

“Whatever you want.”

•••

He didn’t expect her to ever cash in on the favor he owed her. She was a SHIELD agent, and he figured she was busy. What would she need him for?

She had helped him, though. They’d caught the man — a former disgraced employee — who was behind everything. They’d saved Pepper before the man could kill her and gotten her to a safe place. He knew he wouldn’t have been able to do it without her.

And then, like the first time she had helped him, she disappeared from his life. One second she was in the waiting room of the hospital they had taken Pepper to as a precaution, flipping through a magazine and looking entirely too much like a young, innocent girl that she wasn’t. And the next, when he had come back with coffee for the both of them, she was gone.

He thought that was it — as unfilling as it was. He wasn’t going to see her again.

He had actually finally put her out of his mind when the phone rang three months later, the incoming number blocked. He almost didn’t answer, almost tossed his phone aside, but something got the better of him, made him pick it up.

“I need your help. I’m in trouble.”

She didn’t introduce herself, but he didn’t need her to. He would never forget the sound of her voice.

“Where are you?” he said, without hesitation.

It took a little bit to find her, hidden deep in the woods of upstate New York in the rubble of a small house that had long ago fallen down.

He had heard, rather than seen, the men hunting her as he’d searched for her, following the coordinates she gave him, keeping to the tops of trees in the dark as he flew between them, making sure no one saw him.

She hadn’t told him who was after her, or why, but he could tell just from the dark shapes he saw here and there moving below him that it wasn’t anything good.

He landed quietly, before shifting some rubble aside, to find her huddled against a brick wall that was only partially standing, shivering almost uncontrollably. He realized, when he looked at her leg, why she had called him. It was clearly broken and in more than one place.

She forced a smile when she saw him. “Hey,” she said, but her voice was weak. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Yeah,” he said, dropping down beside her. “I come here all the time.”

He reached out to touch her leg. She groaned. Now that he was next to her, he could see the blood soaking through the material around her abdomen as well.

“Yeah,” he said. “We need to get you to a hospital now.”

She shook her head. “No hospital.”

“Natasha, you’re ….”

He gestured at her, but she shook her head, even more forcibly. A branch cracked somewhere close to them. He decided they didn’t have time to argue.

“Fine,” he said. “No hospital. But I’m calling a doctor.”

There was another crack, even closer this time.

“Fuck,” he whispered, slipping his arms under her to scoop her up. A strangled moan, not loud enough to be heard by anyone else but loud enough to send shivers down his spine, came from her, and he looked down for a second just before he shot into the air to see her gritting her teeth against the pain. 

By the time they made it back to Stark Tower — he had radio’d ahead to tell JARVIS to get the doctor _now_ — she had passed out, whether from pain or blood loss he wasn’t sure. Her skin was pale and clammy, her breathing shallow, and he was actually worried about her survival when he handed her off to the doctors.

But if he hadn’t known before that Natasha was tough, he did then and especially when she woke up twelve hours later.

“You owe me an explanation,” he told her. He was sitting in the chair by her bed, his legs propped on the bed.

“I don’t,” she said. She glared at his feet, but she didn’t push them off her blanket.

“I saved you,” he told her.

“Yeah,” she said. “We’re even now. Right?”

For a moment she looked worried. Or maybe he was imagining that something crossed her face other than the neutral expression she usually wore.

He wanted to say yes, just because of the way she was looking at him, but he couldn’t. She had intrigued him for much too long, and this was his chance. He had a feeling getting to know her even a little was going to be a long process. But Tony Stark had never backed down from a challenge.

He tilted his chair back, putting his hands behind his head, pretending to think about it.

“Go on a date with me,” he said casually. “And then we’ll be even.”

She blinked at him. “You’re with Pepper,” she said. “I imagine she wouldn’t like that.”

“Well, since she has a new boyfriend, I’m sure she’ll be fine with it,” he replied.

He pretended to be studying the ceiling, but he heard her sigh.

“I don’t date,” she finally said.

“Make an exception.”

“If I don’t?”

“It’s just a date, Natasha. I won’t try to kill you.”

“I could kill you before you even made a move.”

“I believe you.”

He heard her sigh again.

“Fine,” she said. “One date. And then we’re even.”

“Sure,” he said, trying to sound like he wasn’t trying to hide a smile. “Then we’ll be even.”


End file.
